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I am in the process of creating an isolated replica of my production environment for testing in VMware vSphere 6.5. In vCenter, I setup a new vSwitch with no physical adapters for the development network. I began to clone my production VM's into the development environment and have gotten mixed results. Of the five Server 2008 R2 VM's, two will not detect the network properly. I can not see any other devices on the development network with these VM's.

I noticed when I go into the Network and Sharing Center, the network type is set to "Unidentified network." I am not prompted to allow it to be a domain network. The other VM's that work properly are set to a domain network type.

Has anyone else run into this issue and know how to fix it? I have tried cloning the production VM's when they were power on and also tried when they were off with the same result.

Nick Niggel
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  • If you didn't sysprep these clones then that's my guess as to cause of the problem. Cloned/imaged Windows machines should always be sysprepped. – joeqwerty Apr 12 '17 at 21:41
  • My goal is to replicate my server environment to test changes. This is why I didn't sysprep since that would wipe out my setup. The alternative was to setup a new environment from the ground up but that wouldn't serve my needs. – Nick Niggel Apr 12 '17 at 21:45
  • I'm certain that the lack of Sysprep is the cause of the issue. A cloned virtual machine will almost always have network issues without sysprep. You could try removing/uninstalling the vNIC and re-adding it to see if that fixes the issue. – joeqwerty Apr 12 '17 at 21:46
  • I will give that a shot. It's just strange that I had no issues with the others, two of which are DC. – Nick Niggel Apr 12 '17 at 21:49
  • The Sysprep would reset the SID in windows, but if not changing hardware what else would it be fixing? If the network is completely segregated, the SIDs would not conflict with the cloned vs. originals. – Cory Knutson Apr 12 '17 at 21:50
  • Right. I've had some cloned machines that "seemed" to work, but invariably a network issue cropped up sooner or later. – joeqwerty Apr 12 '17 at 21:50
  • It's not about duplicate SIDS, it's about needing to generalize the hardware of the cloned image. - https://4sysops.com/archives/why-sysprep-is-an-obligatory-windows-deployment-tool-part-1-all-the-important-sysprep-functions/ – joeqwerty Apr 12 '17 at 22:04
  • I tried removing the network card and add it back after a reboot with a different MAC address, same result. I tried adding a different NIC as well, no luck. Running sysprep will defeat the purpose of this. I can't be the only one who tried this and had an issue. I'm sure there are other who cloned their production environment to test changes before implementing them. I think it has to do with how Windows identifies networks. I will continue to look for some clues on this. I am hoping this can be fixed. – Nick Niggel Apr 13 '17 at 15:12
  • @joeqwerty After resetting the network connections and group policy objects entirely, I gave sysprep a shot. I ran it and generalized the hardware. After a reboot and login, it did not resolve my issue. Even after setting the network settings manually, I still can not ping any hosts on the development network. My only guess is that since I do not allow any outbound traffic to the internet, Windows won't determine the connection properly. At this point, I am out of ideas. – Nick Niggel Apr 13 '17 at 18:23

2 Answers2

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After many attempts at troubleshooting, I was able to get it to clone without any issues by uninstalling VMware Tools and reinstalling them again before cloning the VM. Reinstalling it after the clone had no effect.

I shutdown the VM and cloned it. I did not change any hardware settings until after the process was completed. I then went in and changed the network adapter in the VM settings to use the Development network. When I booted the VM, everything worked correctly.

Nick Niggel
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They may be shifting into a different Windows Firewall state (Domain, private, public) and be blocking more than they previously were.

Are you running the same IP scheme on the cloned LAN? Can you ping IP addresses of other cloned servers directly?

Cory Knutson
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  • The cloned environment is identical to the production. The only difference is the Network adapter is set to use the development Network instead of production in the VM settings. The 3 VM's working can ping each other but not the two that aren't working. I also thought it could be the firewall so I disabled it with no change. – Nick Niggel Apr 12 '17 at 21:37
  • Also, they all have the same IP scheme with no conflicts. – Nick Niggel Apr 12 '17 at 21:39